


the colours of the world they're rearranging

by katydidmischief (cassiejamie)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Assassination, Brainwashing, Clint Raised by SHIELD, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Grief/Mourning, Hydra (Marvel), I Don't Even Know, Kidnapping, Memory Alteration, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-02-08 17:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1950669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassiejamie/pseuds/katydidmischief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eventually, something will stick enough that it cannot be jerked loose, no matter how high they crank the settings on the chair, and Pierce will come to realize that when he stole Clint Barton, he stole more than a simple agent of SHIELD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Please keep an eye on the tags, as I may add one or two since this is a work in progress.

He remembers nothing.

He is a blank slate, an empty void: a man with neither past nor future—only present—and if he had any memory whatsoever, he'd know this is wrong.

But he remembers nothing, so he does not fight when he is roughly scrubbed down and dressed in scratchy black tac gear. He feels nothing when a rifle is settled into one hand, already cleaned, oiled, and loaded; he feels nothing still as a photo is shown to him by a man with graying temples, a handsome face, a honeyed voice.

“The mission is Meir Kahane,” he is told.

Apparently, the date is 5 November 1990, and he's been asleep for six months. They even let him know that his birthday is coming up, but all that information is nothing he will get to keep...

(It hurts to forget, but they make him endure and when it's done, they put him on ice and leave him to dream:

_”Barton!” Fury is yelling, chasing the teenager along various half-constructed passageways. The Triskelion isn't much, but that's changing and Clint is notorious for finding his way into the middle of it all to play in the more dangerous sections._

_If one understood play to mean 'run obstacle courses with a recently-brought-in-assassian'. Look, no one has ever said Clint is sane._

_Clint, who is laughing as he runs, makes a hard right where he intercepted by Phil Coulson; it is akin to a full body tackle and Coulson growls as he pins Clint with one hand and a stapler._

_Okay, there's no stapler, but Clint makes sure to always tell people there was simply for the fun of it. When he's older, he figures it'll be fun to scare the pants of the baby agents with, the idea that Coulson can do horrible things with office equipment._

_“You are such a pain in the ass,” Phil pulls back, dusting himself off as he gets to his feet._

_“You're, what, thirty-five, forty? Live a little.”_

_The indignation is clear as day on the other's face. “I'm 26!”_

_“Uh huh...” Clint is forced to trail off as Fury clamps his fingers onto one ear and yanks Clint over, “Ow! Come on, I was just having some fun! I didn't even break anything!”_

_“I'm not worried about the damned beams, you jackass,” Nick replies, a lilt in his voice that only his closest friends would identify as concern._

_“Okay, I didn't break myself either!”_

_“That's not a fucking accomplishment!”_

_Clint has the decency to look suitably chastised—he did break a wrist, two fingers, and an ankle messing around the construction site over the last year_ and _gave himself a pretty good concussion recently—and he mutters, “Sorry, Dad.”_

_“You are the reason I'm bald.”_

_“You're the reason I've had to turn to gymnastics for artistic expression.”_

_Nick shakes his head, but takes Clint's wrist in his grip and leads his son out of the mess of the construction site._

He hates his dreams, but they fade when he wakes and he is grateful for the soothing emptiness when the last remnants are lost.)

...as he will not get to keep the ones that follow, like 16 February 1991 or 8 June 1992, 5 November 1994. 16 May 1998 and 9 April 1999.

They are dates on a ledger that's not in his own possession, written in by the man with the honeyed voice. ( _Alexander Pierce... a man out of time. Too many men out of time._ )

But eventually, something will stick enough that it cannot be jerked loose, no matter how high they crank the settings on the chair, and Pierce will come to realize that when he stole Clint Barton, he stole more than a simple agent of SHIELD.


	2. One

11 October 2001. He is waiting, preparing; his mission is a man—50 year old Caucasian, dark hair but graying, hazel eyes, average height—and he's to work from outside the house. Do not police his brass, do wear just enough to throw off a possible witness they may allow to live.

“You ever wonder,” one of his handlers says to another, hunkered over a bowl of something fragrant as he sits at the kitchen table, “what'd it be like if Barnes hadn't been scrapped?”

The woman cocks her head to the side, ignoring the way the asset pricks an ear in their direction, and thoughtfully replies, “Hell. They say he was only stable for a day or two outside of containment, sometimes three if they wiped him the minute he was defrosted.”

“Yeah, but two assets? Can you imagine our timetable if we had two?”

A buzzer interrupts the conversation, a signal to get themselves into position, and they are gone in seconds. The asset, of course, performs to perfection, his skills through the years refined into a thing of absolute, terrifying beauty. The witness glimpses him, prosthetics on his face made to fuck with later recollection, and the shells remain; he reports to Yes, Sir that it went exactly to specifications. He leaves out the spark of something in his mind, a name that's leeched into his subconscious.

(Barnes slips in and out at random moments, the name seemingly important but, of course, he cannot say why. Still, he instinctively knows to keep that to himself.)

“Excellent,” Yes, Sir says, “Just as we'd hoped,” and then tells his handlers, “We don't have use for him right now. Report to Lukin. Standard protocol.”

“Yes, Sir.” They speak in unison as per training, the response immediate and absolute, and take the asset in hand.

His mind burns. His body freezes.

And he dreams until he doesn't, waking up and warming up in November 2004. He is not wiped straight out of cryo this time, something he doesn't realize is unusual, and takes his orders in stride. If he notices the close watch he is under by Lukin and his direct subordinates, he doesn't give a hint.

He does—he was made to notice those details—but he was trained to never show his thoughts, his perceptions. He cannot show weakness, especially now that he has been put under scrutiny for some reason.

Instead, he goes about pre-mission prep, noting that his handlers for this mission seem familiar despite this being their first meeting; their mere presentation to him at the hanger is enough to trigger a word to loosen from his memory. It takes little effort to push aside, however, and he spends the forty minute delay while they wait for clearance from air traffic control to approach the runway cleaning his rifle.

(It feels odd, the rifle. Not like he's never held it—he doesn't hesitate as he works, muscle memory guiding him through the process—but as if he doesn't feel as confident with the weapon as he would with something else. Which, what else is there? What weapon could a sniper use that wasn't a gun?

Again, he pushes the feeling, the thought, aside and continues on with preparations.)

Once they are airborne, the usual banter between his handlers begins and he is forced to listen to three hours of discussion about some procedural show on television followed by an hour of the latest politics. As they cross into Venezuelan airspace, minutes away from their landing strip, Peters lowers his voice to ask, “Rumlow says they're trying to reactivate the Soldier.”

“I heard from it from Rollins,” Russo replies; she's careful to whisper, glancing toward the asset before adding, “There's no way he's going to be a capable operative. This is the second time they've tried to get him out of cryo this year. Last time, James Barnes tried to reassert himself within fifteen minutes of being out. Wiping him didn't even help.”

“Rumlow thinks they've figured out a way to make the wipe stick,” he tells her and nods toward the asset, but if there was anything else to be said, it was lost to the moment: the pilot came over the system to announce they were in final approach and to buckle up for landing.

And as he clicks his belt into the place, that name, _James Barnes_ , slots into a place in his mind like a puzzle piece:

_Phil's practically got a shrine to Captain America and the Howling Commandos in his apartment. Seriously, there's a hutch in the living room that's filled to the brim with memorabilia and posters over the couch and bracketing the television; there's an entire shelf of books plus the ones on the coffee table._

_“You have a fetish.”_

_“A fetish implies a sexual component. This,” Phil replies, “is merely...”_

_“An obsession?”_

_“Why did I volunteer to babysit you for the boss again?”_

_Clint smirks and flops down on the couch, dragging the Bucky Barnes Commemorative Throw over his lap. “Because you love my sassy personality?”_

_“Yeah. That's it.”_

The plane jerking as they contact the runway jolts him back to the present and a nonchalant look toward the two agents across from him finds that both are so caught up in their pre-mission checklist that they are unlikely to have noticed his lapse.

He steels himself, locking away the memory, and does what he does best.

The mission is completed in record time, the state prosecutor's car rigged with explosives when it becomes clear that the previous mission plan needs amending. They're back on the plane before the smoke even clears and he's met at the tarmac by six guards, Lukin, Yes Sir, and eleven scientists in white lab coats.

Nothing is said as he is taken down to the asphalt, unresisting and incredibly confused.

His mind burns, his body freezes; he sleeps and he dreams, and when they finally decide it's time for him to be of use again, it's 2009.

“The world is coming into our favor,” Yes Sir tells him as the asset shivers through the defrost, ice melting until the cool droplets wind along his arms and torso. “It's creating vigilantes and monsters and it's pushing the masses steadily toward the knowledge that for their safety, they must sacrifice their freedom.

“I need you to help give them another push in the right direction.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Good. Rumlow and Rollins have your orders.”

There's only a name on a photo in the folder he is ultimately handed: **Tony Stark** had been written by a neat hand. They put him in his uniform as he commits the man's face to memory, the shiver ebbing away as the cotton, wool, and polyester layer over his skin, and once he hands the folder back, they press his usual kit into his grip.

The mark is in Malibu, the weather warm despite the fact that they were barely out of January which he savors; he's cold this time, he's never quite felt it so keenly before, and the memory of the ice crystals over his shoulders and thighs refuses to fade. He begins to shiver again as he heads to a perch he's picked out after a quick survey and by the time he has the optimum window for the shot, his hands are shaking to the point of failure.

Still, he tries.

He monitors through the scope for the right moment, the sweet spot, as Stark moves through the mess of people with a redhead he keeps glancing toward, shaking hands and giving chaste kisses. He's nearly onto the asset's mental _X_ , when a man appears on Stark's six.

In that moment, the mission fails and a memory flips forward with aching swiftness.

( _They're still children when they first meet, eleven and ten, but between Clint's fetish for bows of all kinds and Tony's ability to turn spare parts into something robotic, Phil tells Fury he's pretty sure they've got the building blocks of supervillians on their hands._

_“I am not a super_ villian _!” Clint tells him with his hands on his hips. “I'm a super_ hero _!”_

_Nick just smiles and ruffles his hair, saying, “You better be.”_

_Clint laughs, playfully shoving at the hand mussing with his hair, and then races back to Tony and the various parts laying in a circle around the boy; there's the beginning of a bow there on the floor, LED lights along the upper and lower limbs that glowed purple in their black settings._

_For the next half an hour, Coulson and Fury watch, Howard as well, and as Tony finishes off the bow with a flourish Howard knows has come from his son's careful watching of his tics, he passes the weaponry to Clint. An arrow embeds itself in the EXIT sign above their ends a breath later._

_“We're doomed,” Coulson mutters._ )

The world is gray and dull when the memory lets him go, Rumlow's voice in his ear and he knows, sure as anything, that he has earned punishment for this spectacular screw-up. A tear rips itself from his eye, tracking down a dirtied cheek; he swipes it from his face angrily and turns his thoughts to breaking down his rifle, to getting out of the nest.

He feels each rung of the latter, each step closer to his handlers, like a nail in a coffin.

_Run_ , his mind shouts, yet he doesn't take the advice of his subconscious, because where would he go? Where would he hide? He is their asset, their weapon, and they will come for him no matter how hard he runs, how far he gets. So he goes right back into their hands, continuing to shiver so hard that Rumlow frowns and calls back to base, “I think it's sick.”

“Sick? Not possible. Double time back—Doc is waiting.”

“En route.”

They make him forget, or, rather, they try.

But as he had with the mission, they fail with him:

He screams so hard around the guard that even Rumlow flinches; the settings on the chair have been turned so high, the asset is sure his brain is melting away into nothingness. Hell, he prays that is what's happening, he prays it can lay waste to the memories and erase the pain of his failure, ease this punishment.

_Be good_ , he hears in his mind, _Be good for Phil._

And he screams again, a shriek of fear and confusion, that falls away as he finally, blessedly, reaches into unconsciousness where there is nothing but black and silence.


	3. Two

It is spring when they wake him, the flowers outside the vault blooming from careful cultivation by the landscapers and the trees thick with green leaves.

They ask him his name and he shakes his head, confused: his name is a blank, a place for them to place their own identity on him, and the response must be pleasing as he is swept from the open door of the tank to the warmth of the showers. There he is allowed soap and warm water, a luxury he is sure though he cannot say why; the grime falls away from his yellowing bruises, the gash on his leg knitting together as he wipes it with a washcloth.

They dress him in his gear once he's finished, hands oddly gentle, and they let him sit with the folder spread across the table before him.

“His name is Steven Rogers, middle name Grant, born 4 July 1918. Alias is Captain America.” The facts are reeled off by a man with gray hair and a nice suit—charcoal with a matching vest, cream button down, maroon tie with a silver pin—who never takes his eyes off of him. “The others are of importance, but secondary. Rogers must be removed from SHIELD's arsenal.”

“He is an asset,” he ( _Clint_ , his mind murmurs, _Your name is Clint_ , and he ignores it,) says.

“And the asset must be terminated before it reverses all of your work.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“You have a week. Do not waste it.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The man goes and the handlers arrive, getting the papers in order and stowing them in their gear; they give him his kit, a backpack filled with knives and guns of various sizes, and tell him, “They're currently in DC, convening at the Triskelion before they are to depart for the Helicarrier. There may be a golden opportunity to take down the majority of the targets at the departure time.”

“Understood.”

They travel by van to HYDRA's/SHIELD's HQ, the (so tall, too tall) building sweeping into the sky so far that he has to crane his head against the glass to gauge the height. Rollins smirks at him, at his trying to see the whole of their destination; the team, were any of them stupid enough to admit it, saw the asset almost as a child. Oh, they saw him as a weapon first and foremost, of course, but if they held him in mind as a child too and were always amused by his responses to various new experiences, none of the higher ups needed to know.

He is smuggled into the lower floors, held in a closet for hours until it is realized that the Triskelion would not offer them the chance they had been hoping for, but with Fury and the others out of the building, they could move the asset with ease.

They ran katas and they ran scenarios, worked their way through various unnecessary gun refreshers, and when the battle in New York started, they made their way to the battleground: how fortuitous would it be to take down these idiot superheroes during an invasion? It could endear so very many to their cause, bring them ever closer to the project Pierce has been subtly suggesting to Fury for ten years.

“You stay high. We'll herd the aliens which should bring them into your view.”

And they do: Rumlow manages to get Rogers cornered by three of the tall bastards and Rollins gets Romanov pinned down at the Captain's side.

He shifts quickly, scope trained and oh, he has the shot lined perfectly... so perfect... just needs to wait for the lull in the wind and he...

There's the thunk of heavy boots at his back, someone coming to a halt. The cool muzzle of a gun comes to rest against the back of his skull, the threat clearly made; he could easily take the person at his back (six foot to six three, approximately 180 to 200 pounds, gait favoring the left typical of an aged knee injury, right hand holding the weapon steady) but he has to see if this is one of his targets before he can go ahead.

“Hands on your head,” he is told. “Turn around slowly.”

“Okay.”

Slowly he rolls, moving until he's crouched before his aggressor, and once he stops he sees that the man is one of Yes Sir's off-limits. It'd been carefully denoted in the briefing papers, the man's name omitted but his picture there with a barely veiled threat of what this man's death or even injury would result in.

He softens his expression and prepares to plead, to manipulate, that he was there to help, another vigilante set out to protect his city, but the expression on the man's face changes suddenly.

(The shock has worn off.)

“Clint?”

His face screws up. _Your name is Clint_ flits through his mind once more and he doesn't know what to say or do for a few seconds: another puzzle piece slots into place, this one near but not connected to the first, and he _knows_ this man.

 _Dad_.

But the explosion overhead sees his being brought back to reality and the man to glance up; the asset takes the chance to make an escape over the side of the building with the other's distraction. He crashes into the fire escape of a lower level, his leg breaking beneath him from the force; he slams through the glass window, desperately ignoring the agony that he's in until he reaches Rumlow.

The mission is a failure. Again.

He cries when he's put in the chair this time, the broken leg excruciating yet not the source of his emotional agony; Rumlow stands beside Pierce, watching as he had the last time, and he has to fight to keep the flinch in when the screams join the tears.

As the asset gives into the wipe, he cannot hear and he cannot see: everything he is has ceased to fight for itself and the pain eases, if only for a moment. And it is in that moment that he gets the flash of a man, tall and dark in a leather trenchcoat, holding his hand out as he kneels down to look at the little boy hiding in the back of the caravan's closet.

_”It's all right, Clint.”_

It's ripped away, a gaping wound left behind like a bloody pit in his mind. He wonders if he should tell them this is what's happening, that they are allowing memories to slip forth just as much as they are tearing them out of his head, but he can't bear to stop screaming long enough to do so.

The wipe sacrifices the leg. This he won't know for some time, that their quest to make the perfect asset had cost him a part of his body, as if they had no value for something they could replace. It is exactly that, of course—to them, a limb is nothing compared to the mind they had molded—and he will be so ragingly angry that Tony's gym pays the price.

But in that moment, he doesn't know nor does he care: he finds his way into the black that is the safety of unconsciousness, feeling nothing until they rouse him so he can walk to cryo under his own power.

He has grown to hate the cold. Truly, he has, but they have surrounded him with his handlers and men in their scrubs, and he goes in without a fight. Thankfully, it does not take long before he is locked away in his dreams.

When they wake him, the world has shifted.


	4. Interlude

It's dark in Nick's office when Phil and Natasha arrive, not even his desk lamp on to combat the night. Instead, only the vague light of his computer screens makes it possible for him to continue to see—and drink—from the bottle of whiskey currently set on the blotter.

Phil sighs.

It'd been difficult when Clint had first been lost, all of eighteen and on his very first mission for the agency. They'd all been reluctant to let him go, too; half a dozen senior agents had argued, loudly, with the director in that meeting, but Nick had apparently made some deal with Clint that no amount of shouting would negate.

The guilt he carried afterward... well, it'd ground him down for awhile, knowing his stupid promise to his too young son had been the the signature on Clint's death warrant. His presence at SHIELD had been altogether terrifying in those days, though his depression had been tempered somewhat by the reality that the rest of his agents were grieving too.

“This your first bottle, boss?” he asks, approaching the desk and remembering those dark days.

“Depends. You planning to join me or gonna make some fucking stupid attempt at cutting me off?”

Natasha answers, “Joining,” as she settles smoothly into the chair across from him; she slings her legs up until she's sitting as comfortably as one can in one of SHIELD's (mostly decorative) office chairs. She sets one of the empty tumblers down, pours out three fingers worth, and shoots it back without blinking.

Phil sighs. He _had_ come to cut his friend off, but he couldn't argue that he too felt like crawling firmly into a bottle after the events of the prior 48 hours: they'd lost some good men and women to Loki's madness and he himself had come dangerously close to getting shanked by what Tony was calling The Glowstick of Destiny.

And then there was the piece of news that had come from the battle itself, satellite pictures that had been passed around among the older agents...

Yeah, crawling into the bottle actually sounds perfect.

“Joining you, sir.”

Nick nods. “Then no, it's not the first.”

A few glasses go down and the bottle is emptied, the three of them silent but for the clinking of their tumblers; another bottle is produced from the depths of Fury's desk and they're half way through it before Phil finds it within himself to ask, “Are we absolutely sure it's him?”

It takes Nick several moments before he can answer, though not because he has to think over that meeting again. Honestly, he's replayed it over and over for hours, a loop in his head broken only by alcohol or stuttering agents come to ask for his approval on clean up; he's examined the memory for flaws and defects and found nothing that could speak to the man he'd seen being anyone other than Clint.

He leans back in his chair and admits that he's sure, which is enough confirmation for Phil.

(Natasha drinks them both under the table and they sleep on the chairs and sofa, somehow managing to find comfortable positions to do so. This is how Pierce finds them in the morning, all three looking worse for wear; he smiles at first, amused by these people, and moves to first wake Nick.)

**Author's Note:**

> And now, for my next trick, hiding under a rock!
> 
> 1/27/15: So the last few months have been... painful. I lost my younger brother on October 1st and it has taken until now for me to even look at the things I used to love. I haven't written a word of anything since, haven't read fic, and have basically not wanted to do anything from my life before. As I said, I am now slowly coming back to fandom and a side project, and it is my goal to get this fic finished.
> 
> If any of my foster family AU readers see this, I swear, _monster_ has not been forgotten. My issue at the moment is that I need to watch the movies to get my mind in the AU and Tony Stark is so much my brother. Thank you for having patience.  <3


End file.
